Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He is inside a horrendous political commercial full of loss and hate and barely disguised threats of rape and murder and corruption. He is a plate on the wall of the commercial watching the actors perform their lines. There is sport in forgetting the horrors. We are born in violence in the crucible of the powerful. The dead and the dying are the mulch for all tomorrows parties. The stars of sport jackhammer their fists into the faces of their lovers. A woman commits suicide by climbing into a crocodile pit. She takes off her shoes first. She loved her shoes and did not want them to be ruined by the prehistoric beasts. Who will get to keep the shoes afterwards. Will her relatives keep them in a box, uncleaned, perhaps a grass scuff on one corner from where she slipped them off on the wet ground. He reads about the Criminals of Wall Street and their desperate and ultimately successful attempts to save their kingdoms but not without first sacrificing some of their own. These perfidious knights see themselves as heroes even as the world is sickened by their villainy. He eats fried rice. He drinks coffee. He watches a talk that took place the day before the large climate change walk in New York. The speakers are Chris Hedges, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, Brian Lehrer, Kshama Sawant and Bernie Sanders. As Senator Bernard speaks protesters put up a cloth decrying Saunders voting for the bombing of Gaza. There is awkward murmuring. The audience is mostly white. He is happy when a bearded man stands up at the end and says he is sad that there are not more brothers and sisters of colour. The leader of the movement Bill Mckibben does not acknowledge this but deflects it as he tells the questioner to look outside tomorrow and to look at those at the frontline of the climate debate but he does not engage with the truth of the questioner at that particular moment. America and secret allies start bombing Syria around 830 eastern time. This is half an hour in to The Voice. Someone is singing their heart out as enormous missiles smash into buildings as incredibly powerful ordnance cremates numberless human beings. The new acts are pretty good. Everyone trusts that no civilians are targeted. He feels sick. There is no criticism, no questioning. The Forever War. The Endless War. The Neverending War. Whatever it is called it is a hydra. Each war begetting a new war. Each murder creating two new murderers. And on and on and on. He watches Elementary. He eats food. He enjoys The Blacklist. It is utterly ridiculous. He snuggles. Obama is the War President. That Nobel Prize for peace must be in the attic of the White House slowly decaying into a puddle of shame. He goes to sleep.